“It looked that way. But it was the first time it seemed personal, something tied to his private life. That meant we had an opportunity like never before to narrow down who he might be. I forwarded everything to my old boss at Homeland, and they opened a quiet inquiry. We questioned Mr. Bianchi, hoping to learn who might be behind the leak. And we seized his electronic devices to investigate the matter further.”
“What did you find?”
“Mr. Bianchi’s computer was hacked twice, by two separate entities. The first one is who we believe was Nammota, and the second one is another hacker who crippled the device with viruses, causing it to crash entirely. Thankfully, he wasn’t as skilled as the first hacker, and we recovered most of the computer’s content, allowing us to find substantial evidence against the first hacker.”
My eyes travel to the back of Lex’s head. What has he done? Why didn’t he tell me he went through Stefano’s computer? That he’s the one who got him arrested, not Oli?
My hands tremble on my lap as fear spreads through my mind. After all, the proof they have against Lex might not be all conjecture. They very well might have some serious evidence. Shelly grabs my hand andsqueezes it to contain the trembling. I can’t look away from Lex, but I feel her gaze on my profile, and the compassion in it.
I want you to know it isn’t your fault, Andrea.
That asshole… He knew. He knew all along what had gotten him arrested.
“Did you get anywhere?” Ms. Collins then asks.
“Bianchi claimed Miss Knox and Miss Walker were responsible. When we learned about Miss Walker, we investigated her. We found no relevant evidence against her and judged her to be too young to have been Nammota. We then looked into her father, who also knows his way around coding, but found nothing. Because of the scale of the investigation and the stakes, we were granted the right to tap into Miss Walker and Miss Knox’s phones. From there, we learned the former was in a romantic relationship with her boss, Mr. Coleman.”
“So, you looked into him?”
“We did. We reviewed his employment history, publicly available projects, and forensic samples of his past code from professional repositories. His coding style, structure, and certain signature quirks fit the behavioral profile better than any suspect we’d ever had. That, coupled with his romantic involvement with Miss Walker, led us to believe he was the person who hacked into Bianchi’s computer and phone.”
“Anything else?”
“Many things. The coding language, formatting habits, and embedded metadata were a near-perfect match to Nammota’s known work. And his studies in cyber-criminality at Stanford could explain his knowledge of the craft. Nammota’s first big hack mainly focused on malpractice at Avoss, and it coincides with Coleman’s time working for that company. The more we looked, the more Coleman’s profile matched our working theory of Nammota’s capabilities and methods better than any previous suspect.”
“Was that enough to get an arrest warrant?”
“No, the judge deemed it too circumstantial. But on January 2nd, Homeland received an anonymous tip. It was an internal security feed from an office at the Campbell Imperial, in Seattle, time-stamped December 21st, late evening.”
This time, my eyes travel to Evora, a few seats away to my left. She looks livid, face struck by shock. I can’t control my mind from racing with theories. Did she have any involvement in this? If she can’t have Lex, then no one can? As if compelled by my stare, she turns to me, eyes veiled with confusion.
No, she wouldn’t do this. She cares for Lex. She knows prison would destroy him.
“Can you tell us what was in the clip?” the prosecutor continues.
“A man and a woman having a discussion. At one point, the man casually mentioned being Nammota. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t have taken it seriously, but that was different.”
“How so?”
“The couple in the clip were the defendant and Miss Walker.”
“And that was enough to establish probable cause?”
“Yes. We obtained both an arrest warrant and a search warrant and waited for Coleman to return to work after the holidays.”
“Why?”
“We needed the arrest to be quick enough so that the suspect wouldn’t have time to destroy any evidence. Had we arrested him at his residence, we were concerned he might have had enough time to delete critical files. So, while one team executed the arrest at his workplace, another team simultaneously executed the search warrant at his apartment to secure any digital devices and other potential evidence.”
“Have you found more evidence since the arrest?”
“We seized an arcade machine at Kelex where the high score spelled out Nammota. Upon looking at the data, the scores happened late into the evening, after most employees were likely gone. We also interrogated a few of the people working for the defendant, and we discovered Coleman goes by Lex and his gaming tag is Luthor.”
“And why is that relevant?”
“Nammota has always taunted investigators with quotes from Lex Luthor—an infamous villain of the DC franchise. The name ‘Nammota’ itself is ‘Atom Man’ spelled backward, and it happens to be one of Lex Luthor’s aliases.”
Fuck. The more he talks, the less optimistic I am about us winning. Maybe ten years wasn’t that bad, after all. Definitely better than a lifetime behind bars.
